Across the Board

Diplomacy  is a complicated game.  Now,  there's  an understatement! However, when learning how to play it, there is one source which can't be ignored: the creator of the game, Allan B Calhamer. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/ Philosophies If you read anything Calhamer wrote, it seems clear that he had a certain way of playing in mind. Play to solo; if you can't solo, play to prevent any other player from soloing. The objective is to win - to solo - and the secondary objective is to draw, to prevent that other winning; nothing else matters. Stab when you have to; maintain an alliance only so long as it's useful, and keep in mind that 'useful' means until the alliance is preventing you from winning. I call this philosophy  Calhamerism . And yet, for a number of reasons, other philosophies have developed, all of which vary from the origins of the game. I will examine the varieties of philosophies in another series of posts, but it is worth summaris...

Diplomacy  is a complicated game.  Now,  there's  an understatement! However, when learning how to play it, there is one source which can't be ignored: the creator of the game, Allan B Calhamer. http://englishharmony.com/ Calhamer's article Objectives other than Winning (first published in IDA Diplomacy Handbook, 1974) was mainly written to correct the aberrant ideas about scoring systems in Diplomacy. The system he was writing mainly about is known as the 'Strong Second' system, but it also tells us about play when any scoring system is being used. Calhamer's Design Diplomacy was designed to be played as a one-off event. It was designed to be played face-to-face, around a table with all players present at the board. As such, when the Hobby diversified with play-by-mail games, then play-by-email and websites, as well as when it was played as a tournament or league, the game became something different. Setting the game in these scenarios makes ga...